The Forgotten Child
The Forgotten Child
Growing up in the midst of alcoholism has received considerable national attention over the last twenty years or so. It’s widely known that as adult these individuals often struggle with common issues such as feeling isolated, a dependant personality, and judging themselves without mercy (www.adultchildren.org). Another less exposed, dark and embarrassing affliction is growing up in a home overshadowed by mental illness, of which there are numerous varieties. Perhaps even more than alcoholism, the stigma of mental illness creates a veil of secrecy. This curtain can be so tightly woven, that it not only brings profound loneliness, but also a skewed sense of normal reality for the innocent bystanders in the family.
In my new novel, Aberrations (Greenleaf Book Group), aberration is defined as the negative or tragic in our lives. Everyone has at least one issue; it’s the human condition. These aberrations may be caused by our own misguided or foolish choices, or they may result from something far beyond our control such as illness, deformity, family history, etc. The underlying theme of Aberrations is truth. How do we honestly face the truth in our lives, and then how do we deal with it? How can we use these seemingly negative aberrations riding our backs to embrace a unique existence filled with positives? Sometimes reality can be downright ugly; however, if we make the effort to search for beauty, we can almost always find it hiding in the shadow of our pain.
There are many types of mental illness. Some cannot be hidden from those outside the home and family while others seem to disappear once the front door is thrown open, delicately and brilliantly cloaked by those who seek to hide them. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind your neighbor’s door? Hopefully, if you could peak in, the picture would be one of sunshine, the normal ups and downs of relationships, laughing toddlers, and boisterous teens, everyone spreading their wings, trying out life, sometimes stumbling between those exquisite moments that take the breath away. But some families live in quite a different world. For them, there is an insidious aberration adding extreme complexity to all of the above. This aberration twists the normal experiences of life into painful, misunderstood, and/or misinterpreted realities that are not easily washed away despite the most skilled coping mechanisms.
Even when mental illness isn’t carried forward into the next generation, a legacy of confusion, low self-esteem, out-of-whack emotional development, and fear creates a new kind of aberration that may take years to overcome. This is the legacy of the forgotten child. Much like that of children of alcoholics, these children often share a common struggle as adults.
If you were one of these forgotten children, know children struggling in such a household, or perhaps know an adult who lived it, the following points may be helpful:
1) Forgotten children often struggle with a complex mix of emotions for the suffering parent. The nature of our love is a confusing mix of love a parent has for a child and love that a child has for a parent. These should never have to mix but they do in this case. The emotional turmoil of wanting to parent someone and wanting to be parented by that same person is an aberration that can often be tucked away just neatly enough to pursue a normal life. The tucking process takes some time and is often achieved the hard way, but in the world in which we grew up, the hard way was the only way. No one remembered to make it easy; there were other issues to resolve. Now with children of my own, I realize that the easy way was so clear, and wonder why the adults in my life could not rise above the situation to see that. It has to do with care, comfort, responsibility, example, and safety … something soft and warm, caring and accepting … the definition of mother in my novel, Aberrations. In times of stress, this conflict can rear its ugly head. It screams at us as if we were children again, reminding us that we were never quite good enough to wash away the pain shown to us as very young children. This message lives outside the bounds of logic or intellect. It hides inside the emotional core that defines us as solidly as the beating heart that makes us live. Please don’t treat it lightly, even when we try to.
2) The hardest part of being a forgotten child is finding oneself. The normal coming-of-age experience is complicated by a lack of proper mirroring and out-of-whack emotional development. Internalization of childhood experiences is diverse and depends upon many individual factors. My brother’s life took a different path than mine due to our individuality; however, we did not go forward without an equally intense internal struggle for normalcy. All we wanted was normal but all we could relate to was abnormal.
3) I still fear that if I share the facts of my life with others, I’ll be branded. People may think that I’m mentally ill. This is a common issue for children of the emotionally disturbed. And is there something so terribly wrong with me that I was not worthy of my mother’s love? Perhaps this is why she couldn’t pull herself together for me. She was my mirror and when I looked into it, I saw myself; therefore, when others look at me, perhaps they see her. This logic spreads to my ability to feel loved and accepted by others. Again, these fears do not listen to logic; they are embedded like roots I cannot pull completely out.
4) Sometimes we laugh to keep from crying. We forge on, knowing that we have so much to be grateful for, and to look forward to. But that dark spot hangs in the heart, tangling, groping for a place of comfort. And so we still long for a caring smile, for understanding and acknowledgement that what we bear is sacred. It played a huge role in making us who we are. Like the edges of a puzzle, it somehow holds us together although we long to break away. If others can embrace it kindly, our plight to do so becomes a bit easier. Remember this next time you crack a joke. Even though I may laugh, it hurts like hell.
In her book, My Parent’s Keeper: Adult Children of the Emotionally Disturbed, Eva Marian Brown writes that the task of repairing a parent’s psyche is impossible for the child whose main goal in life is to make mommy happy. We were all fated to fail in that task. Our childhoods were stolen by that overwhelming, impossible goal. We were adults at five, six, or seven. Now, as true adults, we are sometimes wise beyond our years, and yet we are too young, never having had the opportunity to mature at a steady pace. We are 200-year-old souls in middle aged bodies. We are giggling children commuting to work. This unusual, divergent mix provides tremendous treasures if we look for them. This is the positive that we can cling to, explore, and apply to our lives.
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